I sometimes claim I’ve had a “checkered past.” I’m a native of Detroit, which isn’t nearly as bad as most people seem to imagine. I graduated from Cass Tech. HS in downtown Detroit.

From a very early age I was interested in natural history and biology, as well as in human history, politics, and culture. Early on, I pursued the latter group of interests. I have a B.A. degree in history from the University of California, Berkeley, where I also took a lot of coursework in literature.

I lived and worked in Baltimore after graduating from Berkeley. In the process, I learned that the world of editing manuscripts and teaching recalcitrant high school students wasn’t for me. Having learned that, I worked for several years at the School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University. This afforded me an opportunity to learn more about what working scientists do — and I liked it so much I decided to become one.

After a brief stint at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, I moved to San Diego, where I taught at both San Diego State University and the University of California, San Diego, as well as continuing my research. I was delighted to move to Florida in 1999 to begin working at USF.

consequences of within-population hetereogeneity for population dynamics, especially with regard to conservation.

the population dynamics of plants in a stochastic world, involving studies of fire-prone pines in Florida and on Long Island, and of a number of species of desert perennials in southern California; and

the ecology and evolution of reproductive timing in plants, and some related statistical problems. Some of this work is field-oriented, some is genetical, and some is theoretical.

Parts of these, as well as other projects, are collaborative. I’m also involved in research in several other areas of plant population biology, including some applications of population ecology to conservation of endangered plants. I am continuing work in theoretical population genetics begun as a postdoc.

Aside from being an admitted computer nerd, I have a number of other personal interests. Some — like hiking and growing the strangest plants I can find — relate to scientific interests. Others — like my taste for offbeat literature, travel, and music — don’t.